Resort Tour – Art of Animation | Bahama Breeze (Lunch)

October 24th, 2015

After the fun and games of yesterday’s arrival at Orlando Airport, we had a bit of a lie in. We didn’t have anything planned for today, other than lunch at one of our favourite offsite restaurants – Bahama Breeze.

We also decided to take a walk around the resort, since this would be the only full day we would have here, so essentially, today’s trip report is a tour of Disney’s Art of Animation Resort. Not much in the way of words I don’t think, but lots of photos (as if you’d expect anything less from me!)

I’ll start with The Little Mermaid area, which is where our room was located. As you can expect from Disney, each area (or courtyard) was magnificently themed. There were huge statues of King Triton, Ursula, Ariel (with her sidekick, Flounder), which stood in front of each of the three building blocks.

There was also Sebastian the Crab, sitting in a clam shell, as well as the statue of Prince Eric that falls the ocean floor in the film.

We overlooked the swimming pool, and the main themeing of this courtyard, which I thought was pretty cool. The buildings had fish, seaweed, and seashells decorating them; and walking around the pathways, there was lots of lush greenery, palm trees, flowers, statues of fish, and even seashells in the plant beds. It felt like every single detail was thought of.

Then on top of all of that, there were giant models of some of the stuff Ariel had in her collection, like the Dinglehopper (fork) and the Snarfblatt (pipe).

Seeing the area in daylight was amazing, and I know we were all blown away by the attention to detail, and how fun everything was.

On the other side of the building we were in (the 7000s), was a view over to Disney’s Pop Century Resort, which looking over from here was also pretty awesome.

Not knowing how far away we were from Animation Hall, which is the lobby area of the resort, and where you’ll find the food court, shop, and arcade; we drove around and parked up. Everything looked very different in the daylight, and we would later find out, that it was around a 10-15 minute stroll away. I loved the check in area, the huge wall of “paper” with animation at different stages of production.

We took a look around the Ink & Paint Shop – not much Halloween merch was left, and Christmas merch was starting to make an appearance. I bought some souvenir staples – fridge magnet, pins, mug, and a Christmas ornament. No photos of those things, I really should get into the habit of taking photos of merch!

We also nipped into Landscapes of Flavors to buy a refillable mug, which was around $16. Liam drinks a lot of soft drinks, so it made sense to purchase one of these, even if it was only for the rest of the day and the morning!

The food court was big, and there were different zones to choose your meals from. We didn’t eat anything from here, as was going offsite for lunch, but the menu seemed varied, and you could also take food away which is handy if you don’t fancy sitting down in here.

There was lots of gorgeous artwork on the walls inside the food court – again, all those little attentions to detail.

You enter Landscapes of Flavors from either the Ink & Paint Shop, or from outside, by the Big Blue swimming pool. The pool area was massive! I believe it’s the largest pool of all the Disney resorts – and there are speakers under the water to listen to music. Very cool! We didn’t actually go for a dip, not really sure why not, but deeply regret that now!